Women Behind the Scenes Spotlight: Lauren Schmidt Hissrich

Today’s Women Behind the Scenes spotlight is focused on television writer, executive producer and showrunner Lauren Schmidt Hissrich.

She was raised in Westerville, Ohio and graduated from Wittenberg University in Springfield, Ohio with a BA in English literature and creative writing. During her junior and senior years of college, she visited family in California where she got to answer phones on a little show called The West Wing [thorough a friend of her aunts, who – ironically – later became her husband]. When she finished college, she returned to California and the set of that show, starting out as a Writers’ PA. She spent 7 years on The West Wing, working as a researcher, story editor and eventually a staff writer. [Soucre: Of Writers and Women]

From there, Lauren worked on the short-lived 2006 series Justice as a writer and executive story editor; a writer and executive story editor on the 2007 short-lived drama Drive before landed work as a writer and producer on Private Practice.

A few seasons later she was a writer and supervising producer on Parenthood and then spent time as a supervising producer and writer on the short-lived drama Do No Harm before spending one season as a writer and co-executive producer on the Starz drama Power.

Over the last few seasons she has been working with Netflix on Daredevil, as a writer and co-executive producer; The Defenders as writer and co-executive producer and The Umbrella Academy as writer and co-executive producer.

Her latest project, for which she is not only writer and executive producer but also showrunner is the highly anticipated Netflix series The Witcher, starring Superman himself Henry Cavill, which is set to debut on December 20, and is based on the original book series by Andrzej Sapkowski.

Lauren lives in Los Angeles with her husband Michael Hissrich, who is also a TV producer, and their two children. You can follow her on Twitter @LHissrich.